Eating in Portugal

(Seafood doesn’t get much fresher than what you’ll find in Portugal.  Pick what you’d like and they’ll cook or grill it for you)

Before my first trip to Portugal, I frequently heard from experienced travelers that a highlight would be the food, which would be fresh, flavorful, and very fairly priced.  That was certainly the case — in fact, we were pleasantly surprised by how delicious most everything we ate was.   And generally the prices were about half of what we’d pay in the USA, which was an added bonus.

Because of its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean, seafood plays an important role in the Portuguese diet.  If you live hundreds of miles from an ocean, like I do, I tend to only order seafood when I’m visiting places near the sea because fish etc. tend not to travel well.  Best to enjoy seafood when you can be reasonably sure it is freshly caught.  We’ve got excellent beef, pork, chicken where I live, so you won’t see many of those dishes featured in this post, but you will see a lot of seafood in this photo collections..

Rather than bloviate about what we ate, I though I’d mostly use photos to share highlights of our dining experiences with you:

Most meals start with a small plate of olives, which are grown in Portugal and which we enjoyed.  Usually fresh bread arrives with the olives.

Sometimes we ordered a small salad, or soup.

We usually just eat a solid breakfast and dinner when we travel, and skip lunch  But those few times we ordered sandwiches, they were terrific!

Grilled and sauteed shrimp dishes are popular…

An unusual appetizer, but one that was amazingly good, were these fried sardines which we enjoyed in Porto.

Some of the fresh grilled seafood platters we enjoyed….

And now on to dessert.

Freshly baked custard tarts are a traditional Portuguese treat.  You’ll find them served throughout the day.

The next two photos are from a pastry shop in Lisbon.

And as with Italy, Portugal serves up some delicious gelato.

I don’t know about you, but just looking at these photos makes me hungry and longing for a return to Portugal.